The gobsmacking news out of the Chicago City Council Finance Committee's hearing Thursday was that the Johnson administration's $3.3 billion bid to buy the meters back from a consortium led by Morgan Stanley was nearly a third higher than the second-place bid of $2.5 billion offered by New York-based private-equity firm Stonepeak Partners.

We're at last getting some solid insight into why Mayor Brandon Johnson refuses to share information surrounding his abandoned bid to retake public ownership of Chicago's parking meters.

Could it be that Team Johnson didn't want the public to grasp how it was poised to make Mayor Richard M. Daley's enraging parking meter fiasco even worse by massively overpaying for the asset Daley sold for a song in 2008?

Think about that. If you're in the market to buy a house or an apartment, you don't offer $550,000 when likely competing bids are $400,000. And if you do, you're considered a fool.

The $800 million delta between what the city thought the 57 years left on the meter deal were worth and the value determined by the most aggressive Wall Street bidder was as high as what the city issues in bonds in a single year for capital projects.

Johnson early this year opted not to follow through on that $3.3 billion offer, thankfully, leaving Stonepeak to strike the deal with Chicago Parking Meters LLC, the current owners. But, since news leaked of the city's substantial efforts to repurchase the meters, the administration has refused to share details of its bid and associated documents with the council.

To justify his inexcusable position on information that surely should be public, Johnson has hid behind a nondisclosure agreement the city signed with CPM back when it decided to bid. Following news this page broke more than two weeks ago that CPM actually had lifted the NDA, CPM and Stonepeak have publicly said they relinquish all rights under that secrecy pact. But the mayor's office maintains that its hands still are tied.

The impasse got almost comical at the Finance Committee hearing when the city's deputy managing corporation counsel, James McDonald, said there remained "ambiguity" in CPM's position with the city on the NDA. For his part, James Wyper, senior managing director of Stonepeak, told alders he'd sign whatever the city needed right there.

Adding to the increasingly humiliating position in which the administration has put itself, the mayor got called out by Stonepeak for ineptitude. It was Wyper who disclosed the city's offer of $3.3 billion (based on "industry intel" that surely is accurate) to the alders and also his firm's $2.53 billion winning bid once the city bowed out. Wyper, who proved himself a surprisingly glib witness, used words like "crazy" and "imprudent" to describe the Johnson administration's bid, given the city's financial outlook and credit standing.

That brings us to the reason the Finance Committee was holding this meeting. The City Council has until July 24 to decide whether to approve or reject CPM's deal with Stonepeak; council approval is needed for any sale of the meters under the original transaction. And, for all the theater of the hearing and Wyper's expressions of sympathy with aldermen, the Stonepeak executive didn't offer any meaningful concessions to make this obnoxious meter deal more palatable for Chicagoans.

For example, there's the matter of so-called "true-up" payments the city must make to CPM when it takes meters out of commission for public events or construction — those totaled more than $13 million last year. Wyper could have offered to cap or even eliminate such payments. Instead, he promised to cooperate to reduce them, say, by adding meters in other parts of the city to offset those that are taken offline. In other words, make Chicagoans pay either way.

Gosh, thanks.

As it stands, there doesn't appear to be majority support in the council for this deal. Wyper said if the deal is denied, Stonepeak will move on. But CPM, of course, has threatened to sue the city in terms that this page roundly condemned.

Still, Wyper strived mightily to give the impression that Stonepeak is a reasonable outfit. With the mayor unconscionably on the sidelines, the council should identify a few leaders — Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell, 3rd, and former committee chair Scott Waguespack, 32nd, come to mind — to see if a deal with real benefits for the city can be struck in the next few weeks.

If not, it was nice knowing you, Stonepeak.

The other alternative no one is now discussing would be for the council to reject Stonepeak's purchase and instead have the city step in as buyer at the same price. Mayoral candidate Joe Holberg wrote an intriguing op-ed in our pages in favor of such a deal and offered a slew of creative ways for the city to make it pencil out while being beneficial for residents.

Chicago's teetering credit rating, not to mention the lack of aldermanic and public confidence in the present administration, might well raise questions about such an initiative, but we think it's worth contemplating. Surely, a few of Chicago's many sophisticated financial minds could help with that analysis.

Meanwhile, as the number of announced candidates in next year's mayoral election grows seemingly by the day, Mayor Johnson's efforts to hide this evidence of his administration's incompetence are slowly unraveling. When they go to the polls in February, Chicago voters ought to keep in mind his serious flirtation with an $800 million parking meter overpayment.

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